Marietta DUI Lawyer

By: Georgia DUI Attorney William C. “Bubba” Head

Marietta DUI Lawyers With Decades of Experience

Marietta GA DUI lawyer Bubba Head has won many driving under the influence cases in Cobb County courts over the last 40 years. Every judge, prosecutor, and criminal defense attorney in Marietta, GA knows him. Mr. Head and his law partners, Larry Kohn and Cory Yager, routinely appear in:

• Cobb Superior Court (Felony DUI cases)
• Cobb State Court (Misdemeanor cases)
• Cobb Magistrate Court (Search warrant issuance, preliminary hearings, and bond hearings)
• Cobb Juvenile Court (Dealing with youthful offenders aged 16 and under)
• OSAH (GA Office of State Administrative Hearings – the Georgia administrative law court)

Our Marietta DUI Attorneys Are All Super Lawyers

This year, all three partners are recognized in Super Lawyers:

• Mr. Head – “Super Lawyer”
• Mr. Kohn – “Super Lawyer”
• Mr. Yager – “Super Lawyer Rising Star” 6 years in a row (for the best DUI lawyers in GA under age 40)

All 3 of our criminal defense attorneys in Marietta vigorously defend clients facing criminal court charges in the six Cobb County municipal court locations, and each partner at our DUI law firm accepts the responsibility to look for any and all avenues of criminal case resolution that will keep a DUI conviction off our clients’ criminal records.

These 6 Cobb County Municipal Court locations are as follows:

• Marietta Municipal Court (Marietta traffic court)
• Smyrna Municipal Court
• Kennesaw Municipal Court
• Acworth Municipal Court
• Powder Springs Municipal Court
• Austell Municipal Court

A Marietta DUI Case Starts in Either Marietta Municipal Court or Cobb County State Court

Many people get arrested for a Cobb County DUI in unincorporated Cobb County Georgia, and these cases begin their court process in State Court of Cobb County, in downtown Marietta. If you can find the Strand Theatre, then you are diagonally across the street for Cobb State Court.

Our Marietta DUI law firm has an office close to Marietta Square:

Address: 55 Atlanta Street SE, Suite 400 Marietta, GA 30060
Phone: (888) 274-6288

Misdemeanor DUI arrests made within the City of Marietta by Marietta Police (or an occasional GA State Patrol case) start in the Marietta Municipal Court. This municipal court for Marietta is located less than ¼ northeast of the Marietta Square, and is in the same building as the Marietta Police Headquarters.

DUI Lawyers with experience with Cobb traffic court cases know that two advantages occur by being arrested inside the Marietta city limits. First, you get two chances to find a non-DUI resolution for your DUI case. Separate prosecutors and judges exist for the two courts. So, it makes sense to explore a possible reckless driving in GA, at Municipal Court of Marietta. The second, and more important advantage to having two courts is covered below.

Don’t Forget the Administrative License Appeal of the DDS Form 1205

Almost every Georgia DUI has an administrative license suspension appeal associated with the criminal traffic ticket case. Look for your Form 1205, which is the paper that replaces your Georgia driver’s license, and acts as a temporary license. YOU MUST APPEAL within 30 DAYS.

Your DUI attorney Marietta GA should have asked you about this emergency situation immediately, and helped you get this DDS appeal properly filed, with the $150 filing fee, within “30 days.” Late filings of the ALS appeal to DDS GA can cost any accused drunk driving with a DUI refusal a one year total loss of license.

Incidentally, all Cobb County DUI administrative court cases, including administrative driver’s license appeals, are heard in the same courtroom as Marietta Municipal Court cases, but at different times and dates.

July 1, 2017 IGNITION INTERLOCK ALTERNATE OPTION: Georgia DUI law now lets you elect to install an ignition interlock device on your vehicle instead of filing an appeal. Within 30 calendar days of your arrest, you must go to the Georgia DDS to apply for an ignition interlock permit. Then, within 10 days of getting the permit, you must have it installed.

The interlock must be on your car for at least 120 days IF you took a breath, blood, or urine test. If you REFUSED chemical testing, the interlock must be on your vehicle for 12 months and cannot be removed for any reason, even if you win your case or it is reduced to another charge such as reckless driving.

The IID option is NOT available to drivers under 21 years of age, CDL license holders, anyone with at least one DUI conviction in the past 5 years from ANY state, and any out-of-state license holders.

If you do nothing (don’t file an appeal or request an IID) within 30 calendar days, your Georgia license will be suspended for 120 days if you agreed to take a chemical test. You will also be eligible for a temporary restricted permit. If you REFUSED the chemical test, your driving privileges will be suspended for 12 months, and you won’t be eligible for a temporary restricted permit.

Cobb County State Court Is a Court of Record, So a Jury Trial is Available

The second great advantage to getting arrested in Marietta Municipal Court is the option for demanding a trial by jury. The DUI attorneys at your DUI law firm will make this decision, or at least suggest this resolution for you, if your DUI cannot be dropped to a reckless driving Georgia disposition.

In DUI misdemeanor cases, a 6-person jury decides your case. In DUI felony cases (like a serious injury by vehicle GA), at Superior Court, a 12-person jury decides any felony DUI or other issues. The critical importance of hiring a highly-rated attorney who is a DUI specialist, with a DUI defense lawyer firm, is critical.

Jury Trials Are Available on Every Misdemeanor DUI in Cobb County State Court

Cobb County State Court is the misdemeanor “jury trial” court for Cobb County. It is also known as the State Court of Cobb County GA or “Cobb State Court.” So, any driving under the influence case in a Cobb County municipal court that cannot be resolved by a negotiated plea to a crime other than DUI gets bound (moved) over to the State Court of Cobb County, where a 6-person jury trial is available.

In all of the cases handled by any Marietta DUI lawyer with our office, we START the case in Marietta Municipal Court to try to get a fair, non-DUI deal for our client, but we will transfer the case to Cobb State Court, if no favorable resolution is available.

DUI and any other misdemeanor traffic offense (including speeding cases) can be resolved at a jury trial in the State Court of Cobb County. Trials are conducted by a DUI attorney Marietta GA from our law firm and decided by six jurors who are residents of Cobb County, under Georgia venue law.

All of our criminal defense lawyer partners are familiar with the Cobb County criminal courts, including the trial procedures, and the judicial tendencies and temperaments of various judges in Cobb County.

This intimate knowledge of your criminal court case assists our clients in knowing what to expect in their DUI court case. We are happy to provide more Marietta criminal defense lawyer information on all three partners when you come in for your FREE professional case assessment.

We Fight Misdemeanor and Felony Cases in Cobb County, GA

Bubba Head, a top criminal defense attorney in Marietta, and his law partners have multiple office locations, including a Marietta law office on Anderson Street in downtown Marietta. Mr. Head and his Super Lawyers partners, Larry Kohn and Cory Yager (an ex-cop from Cobb County Police Department before attending law school), are well-known for fighting both DUI cases and other criminal defense law cases.

Our Marietta DUI lawyer criminal defense firm handles:

• Misdemeanor cases in Cobb County State Court – especially DUI drugs and DUI alcohol
• Felony drug cases – possession, possession with intent to distribute, and drug trafficking in Cobb County Superior Court. Possession of more than an ounce of weed is a felony in Georgia.
• Other felonies like embezzlement, fraud, theft, domestic battery, and stalking in Cobb County Superior Court

For over four decades, Georgia criminal defense attorney Bubba Head has been defending clients facing criminal charges across the State of GA. The majority are citizens charged with misdemeanor DUI offenses, felony DUI charges, DUI drugs, marijuana possession, DUI with a child in car charges, vehicular homicide, serious bodily injury by vehicle, hit and run, and family violence offenses.

Repeat DUI offenders, like citizens facing a 2nd DUI, 3rd DUI, or 4th DUI offense, are regular clients of our law firm’s partners, each of whom is a DUI lawyer. People facing the serious penalties of a DUI second offense or DUI third offense call us, even if they used a public defender or cheap lawyer on their first DUI charge.

Jury Trials Only Occur in Cobb State Court or Cobb Superior Court – Marietta DUI Lawyer

Except for a DUI felony, first-degree vehicular homicide, or serious injury by vehicle felony, the State Court of Cobb County processes all DUI misdemeanor cases originating in the unincorporated parts of Cobb County. Plus, cases bound over from Cobb County municipal court locations come to Cobb State Court for their jury trials.

The misdemeanor criminal cases being processed in the State Court of Cobb County include all misdemeanor arrests NOT made in one of the six municipalities. Also, for DUI cases that need a jury trial, State Court is where misdemeanors go to a jury trial.

Additionally, for repeat DUI offenders seeking to go into the Cobb County DUI Court program, a bind over (transfer) of a municipal court case is mandated since no municipal court is set up to oversee cases in the DUI Court program.

State Court is the place for trial, a negotiated plea, to participate in the DUI Court, and to be able to conduct meaningful pretrial motions hearings.

Because the Georgia Constitution restricts State Courts from hearing any felony criminal matters, the Superior Court of Cobb County, GA handles all felony criminal cases, such as the types of cases set forth above. These include all jury trials or bench (non-jury) trials for felonies.

Our criminal defense attorneys handle various types of felony charges each month, but the majority of those felonies are for drugs or alcohol-related cases, like felony homicide by vehicle while DUI.

Excluding Police Evidence Wins DUI Cases

The most important police evidence usually includes your breathalyzer test results showing how your breath alcohol test was collected, any blood test results for drugs or alcohol content, and the police video of your speech, balance, driving, and demeanor, plus any voluntary field sobriety tests performed that lead to your DUI arrest.

The police video should also show the officer reading you the advisement required by Georgia’s implied consent law. A Marietta police car dash cam or body cam probably captured the whole police encounter, including your manner of speech, your demeanor, and any bad driving that occurred just before being stopped by police in Marietta, GA.

So, don’t stress over a high breathalyzer number, or poor performance on the standardized field sobriety tests, like the DUI eye test or HGN test, the walk and turn, or the one-leg stand. Marietta DUI attorney Bubba Head has handled other DUI cases that had many of these types of potentially damaging police evidence, but he was still able to negotiate pleas and get charges reduced, or win the case at trial.

In many cases, the HGN test has been eliminated by a pre-trial motion, and an alcohol breath test on the Intoxilyzer 9000 was excluded, due to a GA implied consent law violation.

Talk to Marietta’s DUI lawyer Bubba Head before you do anything else, and learn a lot more about how to beat a Cobb County DUI. His FREE professional consultation is worth your time. If you need an exceptional criminal attorney, hire Mr. Head or one of his partners as your DUI lawyer in Marietta GA. Read below for more about the credentials of all three of our DUI attorney partners.

Do You Need a Marietta Criminal Defense Attorney?

When citizens arrested in Marietta, GA for driving while intoxicated come to our office, their burning question is, “How to beat a DUI charge?” Luckily, when they are talking to our DUI attorneys, they are speaking to three skilled Marietta DUI lawyers who have all been tapped as LEGAL BOOK AUTHORS by America’s largest legal book publisher, Thomson-West Publishing. All authors for such prestigious publishers as this are recognized legal authorities on how to beat a DUI.

Mr. Head is co-author of the largest-selling Georgia DUI law book, The Georgia DUI Trial Practice Manual, which is over 1,200 pages in length. This reference book for DUI attorneys, prosecutors, and judges have been the largest-selling DUI book on state DUI laws in the country since 1995.

In 2016, both Cory Yager (DUI attorney in Marietta GA) and Larry Kohn (DUI lawyer in Marietta GA) have written chapters on how to beat a DUI for a Thomson-West subsidiary, Aspatore Publishing. The chapters written by these criminal defense lawyers are on Strategies for Defending DUI Cases in Georgia.

The majority of practicing attorneys in Marietta, GA do not practice criminal law at all. American jurisprudence can be generally separated into “civil” (non-criminal) cases and “criminal” (crimes or violations of some state, federal, or local law). So, most Marietta lawyers do not accept criminal law cases at all. The criminal defense lawyers in Marietta, GA who are DUI lawyers represent less than 5% of all Marietta criminal attorneys. Marietta DUI lawyer Bubba Head is one of that elite 5 %.

Find a Criminal Justice Attorney With Both the Knowledge and the Guts to Fight

When you look for a criminal defense attorney familiar with the criminal courts in Marietta, GA, remember that some Cobb County lawyers only accept felony cases, while others only handle misdemeanor or traffic cases. Some do both categories.

Our DUI lawyer law firm, with offices in Atlanta, Sandy Springs, and Marietta, handles all categories of criminal cases, and also related matters like administrative license suspension, probation violation (VOP), and failure to appear (FTA) legal issues.

But, DUI defense is our specialty criminal practice area. Our criminal lawyers cover Cobb County Superior Court (felony cases), Cobb County State Court (misdemeanor cases), and all other local criminal courts (Magistrate’s Court, Marietta Municipal Court, and the other Cobb County municipal courts).

What our criminal lawyers have to offer is:

1. Experience
2. Top Credentials
3. The proven ability to either negotiate your best plea offer or take the case to trial – and win most cases.

DUI Lawyers in Marietta GA – Attorney Reviews

For a free analysis of your criminal charges under Georgia DUI laws, please complete our online case evaluation form, or call 404-567-5515.

For more about our Marietta DUI lawyer reviews and ratings, for all of the Georgia DUI lawyers at our firm, we give you more details below:

William C. “Bubba” Head, Board Certified in DUI Defense (one of only 4 in the State of Georgia) – A veteran DUI Attorney with 40 years of aggressive criminal defense experience, and over 200 appellate cases to his credit, is a nationally-known DUI book author for the last 25 years. As mentioned above, Mr. Head also originally wrote, and still co-authors the #1 treatise on Georgia DUI law, for over 20 years.

As far as attorney ratings, William C. Head has held the highest ethical rating and highest practice competence rating (5.0 of 5.0) from Martindale-Hubbell for over two decades.

Even rarer, the veteran DUI lawyer is one of only 4 Board Certified GA DUI attorneys and has been named for expertise for his DUI law specialty in the ultra-exclusive Best Lawyers in America directory longer than any other Georgia criminal defense lawyer. Mr. Head also has been honored TWICE with the “DUI Attorney of the Year in Georgia” award for 2012 and 2017, from BestLawyers.com.

William C. Head has been consistently named to the list of Georgia Super Lawyers EACH year (2004 to 2017) since the lawyer ratings were started, a top distinction that only one other Georgia attorney has achieved. One other totally unique attorney rating qualification, for the entire United States, is that in July of 2003,

Mr. Head was voted to be the best DUI-DWI attorney in America, by the members of the largest drunk driving defense lawyer group in the country, NCDD.com.

Lawrence A. (Larry) Kohn, Georgia DUI Attorney, in his 18th year of DUI defense in Georgia, and named to 2017 Super Lawyers – Mr. Kohn began working for Mr. Head after his first year in law school and has over 300 FIVE-star (highest) attorney ratings displayed on AVVO.com.

Cory E. Yager, Georgia DUI lawyer, in his 9th year as a criminal justice attorney, after 9 ½ years as a Georgia police officer – He began as a Cobb County police officer, patrolling all of Marietta and Cobb County, before transferring to Roswell Police Department, so that he could get a regular duty schedule that would accommodate going to law school. Mr. Yager has been named as a “Super Lawyers Rising Star” for the past 5 years in a row.

Mr. Yager has won two statewide quality awards from a private “think tank” DUI defense group of nearly 100 DUI lawyers, for being the Best DUI Defense Attorney Negotiator in the State, among lawyers whose primary law practice is for DUI alcohol and DUI drugs cases in Georgia. Mr. Yager also has been rated at 5.0 out of 5.0 by Martindale-Hubbell, for his highest competence level and ethical standards.

Call Marietta’s DUI lawyer Bubba Head or one of his other law partners today at 404-567-5515 and put 40 years of successful DUI defense on your side.

Mr. Head is a 24-hour lawyer for your Marietta case. His criminal defense law office provides you with a FREE professional case evaluation whatever time of day or night you call – weekends and all holidays, too.